There Is More To Ideation Events Than Ideas

If you are reading this, you are likely familiar with ideation events, or hackathons, or pitch parties, or whatever you want to call them. I am going to refer to them as ideation events because ‘hackathon’ can mean a particular thing to specific disciplines, and pitch parties may incite images of dragons or sharks picking enthusiastic entrepreneurs apart.

Ideation Event: An internal corporate innovation event where individuals or teams can pitch their ideas to leaders who can help advance them. Generally occurs over a relatively short period of time (a few hours to a few weeks depending on the format), during which participants come up with a solution to a problem and then create a short pitch.

For this discussion, assume that the problems participants are working on are either open-ended or undefined where participants can bring any ideas they have forward. I want to be clear about this because there are certain types of events, like traditional hackathons, where the desired outcome is known, and the event challenges participants to invent a way to get from point A to point B. Those events are distinct in many ways, and while some of the following insights may be applicable, they may not translate directly.

Ideation events are generally standalone events (although they can be part of a more extensive innovation program) that help ideas and the people who have them circumvent bureaucratic processes and potential gatekeepers. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. Important to note is that many corporate processes and gatekeepers are not malicious opposers of change. On the contrary, they are essential to running a healthy business, and the people who uphold approval processes are doing exactly what they are supposed to. Clayton Christenson goes into this in great depth in The Innovators Dilemma. If this conundrum interests you and you have not explored Christenson’s work, you’re missing out.

Let’s get back on track before we head down a rabbit hole. Onwards to the heart of it!

Ideation events have more to offer an organization than ideas or solutions. With zero use of any scientific method, I would estimate that less than half an event’s value resides in the ideas and solutions presented. Why? For starters, depending on the source, roughly 75–90% of strategies, innovations, ideas, projects, etc., fail. That will not be surprising if you are an insatiable consumer of innovation articles. However, if you want to dive a bit deeper, I can help google that for you. Despite the low success rates, ideas and solutions tend to be placed above all else in defining the event’s success.

And, It is easy to understand why. Ideas are tangible, promise unrealized upside, and can be executed on. After the event, the organization can say look at all the GREAT IDEAS we gained, and here are the actions we plan to take! Laudable; however, statistically, few of those seeds will bear fruit. In fact, the event may not produce any ideas worth pursuing. But that’s the nature of exploration. As Logan Ninefingers would say, “You have to be realistic about these things.”

That said, there are three ways you can guarantee a return on your investment in holding an event. None of which have to do with ideas themselves. This is because the organization controls all (or almost all ) the variables in these areas. Even if the event produces phenomenally successful ideas, you will leave significant value on the table if you neglect these three things. So what are they?

1. Focus on the problems the ideas are addressing
2. Focus on using the event as a learning and development platform
3. Focus on identifying, developing, and retaining talent

Focus on the problems the ideas are addressing

‘Great ideas’; as in “Hey, that’s a great idea! we should look into that more in the future!…” can be a double-edged sword. If the idea is well-honed, it can create an immediate path to value creation. Your first instinct may be to think that the low success rate of new ideas is the other edge of the sword, but it isn’t. The other edge is the loss of optionality that comes with committing to an idea. Once you decide to pursue a specific idea, you are committing to a narrowed set of possible paths forward.

It’s entirely possible that whenever you are reading this, somewhere in the corporate world, the words “Einstein said — If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions….” are bouncing off the walls of a boardroom. This proclamation is being met with enthusiastic nods of affirmation… then abandoned ten minutes later because someone already has a solution in mind. One challenge is that when humans see a problem, our brains automatically apply our past experiences to quickly come to a solution. This is so that we do not get eaten by bears or, in this case, quarterly deadlines.

You can accomplish far more with a single problem than a single solution. So resist the allure to jump in without asking why.

Maybe I am late to the party. Perhaps it is simply the google algorithm stuffing my feed with correlated articles. But it feels like there is an elevation of frameworks/methodologies bringing balance to the force, some you may have heard of: jobs to be done, design thinking, root cause analysis, and systems design. Either way, there are numerous ways you can approach the idea of designing the right thing (exploring the problem) before getting the design right (choosing a solution).

The popular double diamond image above illust the parts of the process that often get less attention than they deserve when we jump straight to a solution (represented by the circle on the far right).

I strongly encourage you to put considerable weight on the problems participants identify. I am not advocating you discount the solutions participants propose, but rather that you value both the problem and solution equally. Personally, when I design an ideation event, how well the problem and/or why is defined has a prominent place at the top of the scorecard.

Imagine this…

You are part of an ideation event where a team presents a valid idea to bring a new-to-the-organization product X to market Y. Where market Y is an adjacent market to where the organization currently plays. After the event, a leader with significant experience with product X steps up to help mentor the team. They engage their connections about product X, but there is little traction out of the gate. The idea dies on the vine within weeks.

What was left unexplored when the focus was placed solely on the idea?

How about…

• Why might market Y want something like this?
• What environmental factors are impacting market Y?
• Is market Y viable? Is it growing? Is it relevant?
• What challenges is market Y facing today?
• Could existing products meet market Y’s needs?
• What alternative approaches are there to solving market Y’s perceived challenges?
• Is the problem a symptom or a root cause?

This is a highly simplified but true scenario. It happened to a friend of a friend of mine…

Two important things before we leave this story. First, with a bit of ingenuity, all those questions could have been explored with relatively few resources. Second, while this seems painfully obvious and logical in retrospect and from afar, in the heat of the moment, with a million other things going on in the organization, it can be almost an unconscious action to zero in on the solution. I encourage you to take a moment and reflect on your past experiences. My guess is you have encountered something similar.

The participants in your ideation event are dropping a treasure trove of uncut gems into your lap in the form of problems they are noticing. Do not leave them behind.

Focus on using the event as a learning and development platform

During an ideation event, you have a captive audience. Take advantage of it by integrating a learning and development component. A little bit of proactive design work can pay dividends.

To do this, focus on two or three capabilities you want participants to develop. There are many ways to integrate specific learning objectives into your event. Below are some tactics that have been successful for me in the past.

Utilize Your Scoring Rubric — When creating your scoring rubric, consider what is top of mind for the organization and what skills could help grow your organization’s innovation muscle. Give these meaningful weights on your scoring rubric and guide participants on how to score well in those areas. Here are some dimensions to kickstart your imagination.

How well did the team…

• Explain the problem they are addressing and why it is an important one to solve?
• Articulate what the benefit could be if everything went right/define the art of the possible?
• Align their idea to organizational properties like brand, values, or purpose and explain how it will advance them? Consider an organization launching a new brand identity. How might you tie the principles of the new brand to the event?
• Connect the idea to the end customer? (This is about service design. If the idea is about creating internal efficiency, how does that efficiency allow the organization to better serve the customer)
• Identify what cross-functional resources will be required.

Remember, the more you put on the rubric, the less capacity participants can dedicate to each item. If everything is important, nothing is important.

Guest Speakers — Bring in an external speaker that aligns with the event’s theme and can help stretch the organization’s thinking on the topic. Don’t bring in someone who will talk about things everyone already knows. Use this opportunity to inspire bold thinking. Alternatively, bring in an expert in storytelling, innovation, or presenting. Soft skills that are invaluable for conveying ideas.

Internal Speakers — External speakers can be powerful because they bring an outside perspective. That said, not everyone has the budget or connections to make it happen. Don’t discount the knowledge you already have in-house. Have a respected leader talk about bringing ideas to life or someone from marketing who can illustrate how to incorporate brand principles. Past winners and participants are also good sources of inspiration.

Workshops and Webinars — Run a workshop or webinar that takes participants through a specific part of the process that you want to elevate. This helps them do a chunk of the work they would have to do anyways while learning something they can apply in the future.

Pre-Pitch Assignment — Create a short pre-pitch assignment that will supplement their pitch. One approach that worked well was to have teams create press releases for their ideas based on Amazon’s working backwards approach. To do this, we created a one-page ‘how to’ guide, a template, and held a webinar to teach it. It was far from an immersive application of the methodology, but it was enough that participants had to think differently about their ideas.

Create Connections to Subject Matter Experts — Reach out to subject matter experts in areas like finance, risk, marketing, people, operations, etc. ask them to act as mentors so that teams who want to know more about those areas have someone they can reach out to. The mentor’s purpose is not to do the work for the team but to point them in the right direction. This also helps build connections across silos.

Focus on identifying, developing, and retaining talent

There is no shortage of material on the need to identify, develop, and retain talent. Ideation events can help with that in several ways if you are purposeful about it. The event won’t do the work for you; it only presents the opportunity.

Identification — The only people who are going to go out of their way to participate in a voluntary ideation event are those that are curious, have ambition, or are what Michael Tushman calls corporate explorers:

“You cannot get to the future by doing what you have done in the past. It’s imperative that you excel in what you’re currently doing and create the future and that’s what the role of corporate explorers are.”
- MICHAEL TUSHMAN during an Interview on the HBR Podcast Cold Call

Ideation events can accelerate talent identification by giving these individuals a platform to essentially identify themselves. Determine what traits you are looking for ahead of time and keep a record of who participated, how often, their interests, and their performance. You will be amazed at how much data you can get from one event.

Develop — This differs from the skill-building section above. There we are talking about strengthening the organizational innovation muscle and developing skills en masse. Here we are talking about how to create development opportunities for specific high performers you have identified during the event. Use the momentum of the event and keep them growing by:

• Setting them up with a mentor in an area of interest.
• Adding them to a cross-functional team to get exposure and experience with projects outside their area of expertise.
• Create a small project they can lead or assign some additional insight gathering based on their idea
• Have them teach others, ex. if they are a great presenter or storyteller, have them put together a lunch and learn style workshop

Retain — Research shows top performers are purpose-driven. They want to advance themselves while impacting the organization and have big ideas on how to do it. Ideation events take away the frustrations that accompany traditional channels and provide a space for people to shoot their shots. People want to work for organizations that listen to them and are open to bottom-up ideas. You can create the space for them to shine, or they might just find another organization that will.

In closing, centering the success of your event solely on ideas and the ability to execute them is like expecting a home run every time someone is at bat. There is significantly more guaranteed value ideation events offer if you intentionally approach them as a way to identify problems to solve, create a learning platform, and use the opportunity to identify and advance talent. Be purposeful in your approach and know that the event is the start of the journey, not the end.